


The World May Try to Define You

by LibraryMage



Category: Leverage
Genre: Archie Leach is a Bad Father, Aromantic Character, Autistic Character, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Parker has had a lot of labels stuck on her over the years.  Some of them were given to her by others, and some of them she chose for herself.





	1. Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from "Wanderer's Lullaby"
> 
> warning for: references to child abuse; alcohol; child abandonment; foster care; bullying; ableism; ABA (chapter 8); child death (chapter 9); therapy-related trauma; accidental self-injury
> 
> other warnings will be added as new chapters are posted

It was so long ago that Parker could just barely remember it, but there used to be a time when people just thought she was Quiet.

She didn’t talk and she’d learned fast that crying or shouting or making any noise at all never got you anywhere, except maybe sometimes it got you hurt.  She was just barely young enough that people weren’t taking it as a sign that something was wrong with her.  Not yet, anyway.  They just thought she was Quiet.  Quiet and Shy and sometimes even Sweet.

Quiet kids are Sweet when there’s not a reason they’re Quiet.


	2. Strange

Most toddlers were talking by the time they were two or three.

Most toddlers didn’t react to bright lights by ducking their heads and covering their ears.

Most toddlers couldn’t sit still for hours, staring blankly in front of them in an almost catatonic state.

Someone she’d called Mom (whose name she didn’t remember) didn’t seem to mind that when she wanted to leave ~~Anna~~ Parker alone for hours and not be bothered by her.  But she did mind whenever she actually had to _see_ it.

“There’s just something Strange about her,” Mom had said to someone else one day.  “It’s like there’s something wrong with her.”


	3. Stupid

Mom was the first person to call ~~Anna~~ Parker Stupid.  At least, she was the first person Parker _remembered_ calling her that.  In her earliest memory of being called Stupid, Parker knew she’d already been called that before, more than once.

When she was old enough to go to school, Mom was gone, but other kids called her that in class, at recess, on the bus.  Teachers did, too, even if they tried to sugar-coat it.  “You don’t want people to think you’re stupid, do you?”

It didn’t matter that Parker could read when she was two, that she could add and subtract while some of her classmates were still struggling to understand the concept of numbers.  Not talking meant you were Stupid.  When you started talking, saying things like “the lights are loud” or taking too long to get words out meant you were still Stupid.

No matter how Smart or Improved (a word Parker later learned meant “better at pretending to be Normal”) you were, they still found ways to make you Stupid, and maybe you really were.


	4. Fucking Annoying

Parker had started talking when she was four.  She spoke in short phrases and half-formed sentences, something she later learned wasn’t even unusual for kids that age.

Sometimes she talked to herself (there was no one else to talk to).

Mom had been just a bit more than a little drunk (Parker could tell the difference between a little drunk and very drunk and everything in between) when she called ~~Anna~~ Parker Fucking Annoying and kicked her, not hard enough to hurt (much), but hard enough to knock her down and shut her up.  Once Mom had sobered up, she never apologized, never said she didn’t mean it, because even if she didn’t remember it, she did mean it, just like everyone else meant it.

And if that many people said it and meant it, they were probably right, weren’t they?


	5. Ward Of The State/Foster Kid

People started calling Parker a Ward Of The State and a Foster Kid around the time someone found her at that truck stop, asleep on the bench where Mom had left her and told her to stay put.

Parker had no idea what either of those things meant at first, but it didn’t take her long to figure it out.  They meant Mom wasn’t coming to get her.  They meant some lady called a “case manager” controlled her life.  They meant three different houses and three different sets of grownups telling her what to do in the first month.


	6. Weirdo/Freak/Headcase

Weirdo was probably the nicest word kids at school or at “home” called ~~Anna~~ Parker.  Some of the other things they called her were much worse.

There was a therapist the school or her case manager or _someone_ forced Parker to see who once asked Parker if she was making any friends.  Parker had shaken her head and said “they all think I’m Weird.”  When she got older, Parker figured out the right response was “you’re not Weird, you’re Different and that’s okay.”  What the therapist actually did was ask Parker _why_ they thought she was Weird and what she would do to change it.


	7. Autistic

Parker was eight when she figured out there was a word for the ways she was Weird and Strange and Different and that no one had ever bothered to tell her about it.

The word was Autistic and she only saw it when she stole her own case file from her new case manager (he’d just left it on his desk right in front of her while he stepped out of his office; it barely counted as stealing).

She stuck the word in her head, not knowing what to do with it yet, and carried it with her.  It certainly _sounded_ better than just Weird.


	8. Good Girl

It was another therapist who started calling Parker a Good Girl and taught her foster parents how and when they should call her that, too.

Even as an adult she could remember exactly how his voice sounded when he’d make her do things like stand up sit down look at me touch nose over and over and over and over.

If she did it the right way and did it enough times without crying or saying no or making trouble, she was a Good Girl and she’d get a gummy bear.

If she didn’t do it right, he’d make her look at his face ( _eye contact is important_ for some fucking reason) or make her smell something that made her head spin (ammonia, probably, she realized years later), or pin her arms down and tell her “quiet hands.”

By the time he was done with her she was also called (Intentionally) Difficult, Defiant, Aggressive, Violent.  Those words went into a report that went into her file that followed her forever.  Sometimes she didn't care.  It was worth the look on his face the first time she'd kicked him in the shins.


	9. Sister

Parker was eight when she met Nick.

He had a huge smile on his face and was excitedly talking about how _cool_ it was to have a Sister.  Parker already knew the routine and figured the thrill would wear off in a few days, once he realized she was Weird.  But it didn’t.  He sometimes called her Weird, but to him, Weird was Cool.

It was almost as if he actually liked Parker, but as a person, not just an idea (people liked her as an idea; they liked the idea of taking in a Foster Kid; they even liked the idea of an Autistic Foster Kid, to show what Good and Understanding people they were; but they didn’t like her as a person so it never lasted long).

Parker liked him, too.  He was the first person who really acted like her Friend.  They were in different grades in school, but played together at recess.  He taught her how to skip rocks and she taught him how to ride a bike (and how to lift a wallet; _don’t tell your mom_ ).  She’d never had or been a Sibling before, no matter how many other kids were in whatever homes she was put in, but now she was a Sister and she had a Brother.

Until she didn’t.

And then Parker was in another new house where she wasn’t a Sister, just the New Kid.

Even as a grownup, Parker can’t figure out if she’s still technically a Sister, or if you stop being that when your Brother dies.


	10. Runaway

Parker liked the word Runaway.

It sounded Brave.  It sounded Defiant (but in a good way, not the bad way people always called her that).

Getting away was always so easy.  It was the staying gone part that was hard.  No matter what city or state she was in, the cops were always good at finding Runaways like her.  Better at finding them than at stopping the things that made them run away in the first place.


	11. Flight Risk

First she was a Runaway and then they caught her and then she was a Flight Risk.

Flight Risk meant if a social worker came to the house and saw a lock on the outside of a bedroom door, the foster parents could use those two words to stop any questions.

Flight Risk meant if no one could be bothered to watch her, she could be locked in somewhere to stop her from leaving while no one was looking.

Flight Risk meant all kinds of rules that kept on changing and that she was pretty sure the grownups made up as they went along.

Parker barely noticed.  It’s not like it had been any different _before_ someone wrote Flight Risk in her file.


	12. Smart/Clever/Gifted

It was rare, but sometimes there would be a teacher or a foster parent who would think ~~Anna~~ Parker was Smart.  Sometimes they’d even say she was “too Smart” and ~~Anna~~ Parker would anxiously wonder what she’d done wrong until the day someone explained to her that that was supposed to be a compliment.

Archie called her Smart and Clever and even Gifted all the time, but it never felt like a real compliment.  More like an expectation.  Sometimes even a criticism.  She would never be able to figure out why, but sometimes it even felt like a threat.


	13. Daughter

She hated it when he called her that.

The sound of the word made her want to break something or scream or claw her own eyes out (or his; his would be good too), but she kept it hidden behind a blank expression and sometimes even a fake smile if she could manage it.

She hated it and she hated him and she hated how he pretended he was different from the others and turned out to be exactly the same and sometimes worse she hated how he’d tricked her and lied to her and trapped her and she hated and hated and hated and...

Sophie had seen Parker crush a glass bottle in one hand twice in her life.  One of those times had been when Sophie asked her if she’d ever actually been okay with Archie calling her that.  They’d chosen to laugh about it while they pulled glass out of Parker’s hand and then never speak of it again.


	14. Thief

Parker wasn’t the first person to call herself a Thief (Mom had been the first), but she had long since embraced it.  It was the first thing about herself that she was really sure of.  She was a Thief, and she was a damn good one, too.

She’d picked her first pocket when she was four years old and she had only moved up from there.  By her fourteenth birthday, she’d already robbed her first bank, clearing out dozens of safe deposit boxes while the security guards just one floor above her were none the wiser.

Nate had once called her the World’s Greatest Thief, and for once, Parker didn’t deflect the compliment.  The idea of her being good at something and owning it wasn’t bad anymore.  It was why the team wanted/needed/liked her.  She was a Thief, and she was _their_ Thief, and she’d earned that.


	15. Aromantic

Parker had always known she didn’t have feelings about other people the way everyone else around her seemed to.  She’d _tried_ to because that was what you did when you were Different, and after years and years and _years_ of being told she wasn’t Normal and didn’t even have feelings at all, she’d forced herself to fake it.

When Sophie had given her the word Aromantic, it made perfect sense to Parker.

It had been in the middle of a conversation about feelings and about Hardison and about that FBI agent with the obvious crush on her and how Parker was terrified of them thinking she liked them the same way and how upset she was that she didn’t know _why_ she didn’t like them and what if it was because she was too Damaged.  Parker had spent most of that discussion pacing around the room, flapping her hands nervously, her anxiety growing with every word either of them said.

And then Sophie had calmly asked her if she’d ever heard the word Aromantic before, and she explained what it meant and that it was Normal and it was Okay and it wasn't a sign of something being wrong with her, and Parker could have hugged her if she hadn’t built up so much nervous energy that physical contact with anyone might have triggered a meltdown.


	16. Friend

Parker never had Friends.  Nick didn’t count at first because he was her Brother and Siblings weren’t the same.  Then he didn’t count because she wanted to forget he existed.

She’d thought she had friends, but as the rest of the crew was quick to point out, if people said they were your Friends and then bullied you, they weren’t really your Friends.  And as Sophie was even quicker to point out, behavior therapists were _never_ your Friends and they only told vulnerable kids they were so it would be easier to control them, and that no matter what they said the rules were, Parker got to choose whether someone was really a Friend.  Parker believed it.  If anyone knew about manipulation and control, it was Sophie.

Parker had confronted Hardison about all of it and asked why any of them cared so much about setting her straight about things that had happened years ago.  He’d just answered her without any concerned or pitying looks.  He’d said it was what real Friends do.


	17. Mastermind

Nate hadn’t needed to tell them he thought Parker should take his place.  They all just knew, and Parker had easily slipped into the space he’d left behind.

She wasn’t Nate.  She would never be Nate.  He would always understand and predict people better than she ever could.  But she knew she didn’t _have_ to be Nate, and that made it easier.  She could still be a Criminal Mastermind without forcing herself to be better at things she wasn’t built to do in the first place.


	18. Okay

With the team, Parker was finally Okay.

She wasn’t Happy; not the way people used that word to describe a person in general, anyway.  Happy was something that came and went and usually only stayed for a brief period of time.  She was Sad and she was Angry (she’d been Angry since preschool and that was probably never going to change), but it was easier to carry than it used to be.

Eliot and Hardison and Sophie and Nate were her Friends, her Family, and the team was her Home, whether they were in LA or Boston or Portland, and they were all fine with her being just Okay.  They didn’t try to force her to be Happy or Normal.  They took her as she was and as long as they could do that, Parker knew she’d really be Okay.


End file.
